Human Geography Research Articles

The Value of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Human Geography and Bioethics.

Human geography and bioethics both take pride in their interdisciplinary approaches. Relatively little cross-pollination has occurred between human geography and bioethics. This paper takes three cases to highlight the generative potentials of both disciplines, dedicating time and space to learning from each other. Through doing so, we highlight these potentials by focusing on how navigating public spaces subverts the expected uses of particular spaces. We demonstrate that these are entangled with questions of responsibility that both geographers and bioethicists might find helpful. Human geographers and bioethicists can, and should, look for non-naïve ways to care for space, and we hope for this paper to be an example of where to start in the collaborative future of our disciplines.

Towards discovering human urban activity—tactics of human spatial behavior

ABSTRACT The study of human spatial behavior primarily focuses on recognizing their spatial diversification and indicating their distribution, which is well described in the literature. In addition to exploring the phenomenon and its description, the essence of human geography is also to explain it. In this context, it is valuable to learn about the practices carried out by users of urban spaces and the tactics they adopt that result in specific spatial behaviors. To date, most research has been concerted on identifying the determinants, needs, and perceptions of space by its users and, in recent years, on psychophysical responses to the surrounding environment. This research investigates how people strive to realize their needs in urban public open spaces. The study was conducted among users of the Liberty Square in Poznań, Poland. Two methods were used during the qualitative field research: observation and individual in-depth interviews of a casual nature. The obtained data were subjected to qualitative analysis using CAQDAS software. The results of the study identified three human spatial behavioral tactics (SBTs) oriented toward (1) space, (2) people, and (3) needs. SBTs mark the course of human activity and determine where it occurs, its duration and intensity. A person chooses one dominant tactic, while the others influence their spatial behavior but play a complementary role. A person determines the proportions between tactics each time, which affects a great deal of flexibility in the course of their spatial behavior.

Preface: The 5th International Conference on Environmental Resources Management (ICERM) 2023

Water resources have become crucial for livelihood in the previous decade [1,2]. Population pressure, climate change, hydrological disasters, and inadequate implementation of integrated water resource management have all been topics of concern among water resource professionals [3,4,5]. Meanwhile, poor hydrological data and a lack of government policy focus (especially in developing countries) on hydrological data collecting are challenges that make it difficult to implement water resource management and integration to secure human livelihood [6,7].The Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada, particularly the Department of Environmental Geography, has a long track record and experience in addressing water resource concerns and their relationship to other elements of livelihood. In this case, in an era of rapid development, particularly in developing countries, and increasing awareness of global climate change, the Department is looking to highlight the most recent issues and discuss efforts related to sustainable water resource management by hosting the 5th International Conference on Environmental Resources Management (ICERM).The conference, with the theme “Water resources management for sustainable livelihood,” was held on September 26, 2023, in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. 57 presenters from 5 nations attended the conference, which was preceded by 12 keynote and invited speakers from 6 countries. The 5th ICERM’s sub-topics are as follows:• Implementation of integrated water resources management;• Livelihood and water resources management in urban areas;• Water equity for sustainable development;• Marine sciences and coastal management;• Ecosystem and tropical lake management;• New urban agenda and sustainable urban development;• Natural resources and disaster management;• Environmental sciences and climate change; and• Human geography and spatial planningFinally, we would like to extend our appreciation and gratitude to all parties that assisted and cooperated towards making this conference a success. This conference is supported by Faculty of Geography UGM and the Publishing Agency of UGM, and in cooperation with Flinders University, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Seoul National University, Kobe University, National Taiwan Normal University, CSIRO, SEALNet-Malaysia University of Science, Indonesian Geographer Society, Indonesian Hydrological Society, Indonesian Limnological Society, Indonesian Groundwater Experts Association, and Chinese Academy of Science.

The Land, the Sea, and the Colonial Production of Space within the Anglo/British Empire

The manufacturing of colonial legal spatialities in the Age of Discovery has traditionally been studied by historians, human geographers, and cartographers. Seldom have legal scholars examined it. This essay aims to fill the gap in legal research and assesses processes of spatial production that took place in colonies by adopting a legal-geographical approach. Special attention is paid to how the English, and later British Empires manufactured both terrestrial and oceanic spaces. The essay maintains that, within what this article calls the ‘Anglo/British Empire’, the integrated geographies of land and sea were facilitated by some intrinsic qualities of the English common law. Its legal coding devised a holistic approach that captured the whole earth even beyond the divide between land and sea.

Tacit knowledge of places. Experiences from the post-agrarian countryside

This article is framed by a broader discussion on the new meanings conferred by rural areas, and the construction of rurality recently undertaken by human geographers. The aim of the research presented here has been to identify perceptions of the countryside in Poland, at a time when a fundamental transition from agrarian to post-agrarian communities has already taken place. After a briefreview of the literature and a presentation of the contemporary conditions of rural development in Poland, the paper presents the results of the study conducted in 22 pre-selected villages in Poland. The social research involved semi-structured interviews and freehand sketches exemplifying tacit knowledge about these places, i.e. the symbolic meaning attributed by people to their living spaces. Results of this research show that uncovering this knowledge generates a variety of information useful in interpreting contemporary rurality as shaped by dynamic change in Poland’s economy and social life.

Here or There? An Examination of Community College CTE and Student Mobility Across Rural Locales

Community college career and technical education (CTE) represents one potential way in which students can receive important postsecondary education and training. Yet, existing research suggests rural community college students experience stratified access to CTE. Using a joint human capital theory and geography of opportunity theoretical framework, the current study examined the degree to which students residing in rural locales pursued CTE areas of study that were different from students in non-rural locales and whether patterns in community college CTE participation were associated with student movement or “mobility” across and within rural locales.

Rethinking ‘causality’ in quantitative human geography

AbstractCausality is at the core of much contemporary discussion in social sciences, philosophy, and computer science—from the establishment of basic definitions of causality to developing methods for causal inference, this discussion is increasingly finding voice within geographical literature. However, geographers have long discussed (and differed) about the role “causality” plays in our work. We present a history of contemporary definitions of causality arising from philosophy and examine how these intellectual currents interact with past and present geographical thinking about causal relations. In particular, we focus on how new thinking about counterfactual causality can help re‐route inquiry around a well‐known impasse: law‐based causality in geography. In other words, while different perspectives around “laws” of geography exist, we argue that it is more productive to put aside these differences and find common ground in counterfactual causal thinking. To demonstrate, we outline new kinds of scholarship enabled by counterfactual causality and contemporary challenges that counterfactual causality faces in spatial analysis. Throughout, we refer interested readers to contemporary work on spatial causal inference and methods useful for scholars interested in analysing causal relationships in geographical systems.

Assessing Narrative Space: From Setting to Narrative Environments

Abstract This essay addresses the insufficient attention paid in narrative theory to the reformulated concept of space resulting from the spatial turn in the analysis of narrative space. To address this lack of attention, the essay proposes the concept of “narrative environments” as a new lens for conceiving of narrative space that distinguishes it from setting. Narrative environments are the formal narrative expression of space: the combined social contextualization and historicization and environmental imaginings that have historically produced that space and are called forth in the narrative to build narrative space and its interactions with other narrative components. These are distinguished from “setting” in that the latter has been interpreted as textually self-sufficient, not relying on social and cultural knowledge. The article reviews recent debates on narrative space and their branching into the fields of critical geography and ecocriticism in order to bring the reenvisioned concept of space resulting from the spatial turn into the discussion. The functioning of this new perspective on space is illustrated through the analysis of island and ocean space and its narrative effects in J. M. Coetzee's Foe.

Geography, landownership inequality, and literacy: historical evidence from Greek regions

AbstractOur work sheds light on the joint role of human capital and geography during the early stages of the transition from stagnation to growth in early twentieth century Greece. We uncover a robust association between geography and literacy. We also show that geography is correlated with land inequality and thus establish that land distribution is a channel through which geography influences literacy. Finally, the impact of geography on human capital formation weakens with industrialization. Our work contributes to the literature on geography and human capital in the transition from stagnation to growth since Greece was at the early stages of the industrial era during the study period.

Biodiversity, mental health and well-being: psychological mechanisms and moderators of a complex relationship (BIOWELL)

Human activities and their consequences, such as environmental pollution, the exploitation of resources or deforestation, are major causes of biodiversity loss. However, humans depend on a biologically diverse and healthy environment in many ways, as it provides access to clean water, air and food. The loss of biodiversity is an ecological crisis that threatens human health, and ultimately their very existence. At the same time, there is an unwavering interest in the positive effects of "nature" on mental health. Although these examples point to a connection between biodiversity and health, little is known about the causal effects of different facets of biodiversity on mental health. Exploring these relationships and the underlying psychological mechanisms is a major goal of this project. We will build on the expertise of an interdisciplinary team involving scholars from psychology, biodiversity research, human geography, and behavioural economics and combine this expertise with a variety of methods, with a focus on quantitative research, experimental and intervention designs, and investigate participants from different age groups to understand the causal effects of different environments with varying degrees of biological diversity on mental health, and to identify the physical, social, and psychological boundary conditions of these causal effects.

Spiritual Disorientation: A Study of Place in Linda Hogan’s <i>Solar Storms</i> from the Perspective of Human Geography

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer grown up in the Native American Renaissance, who feels much obliged to figure out an effective way of guiding the colonized native people out of ecocide and ethnocide wrought by the Euro-American colonization. As an author wholly drenched in the indigenous cosmology, Hogan bestows great concern on the issue of place in the literary creation, which is a pivotal cosmological element in the native epistemological system and thus can be taken as a means for her to decolonize her people. This paper is to investigate the issue of colonization and decolonization through the lens of place in the register of human geography by exploring the spiritual disorientation attributed to land loss represented in her novel <i>Solar Storms </i>(1995). Based on detailed textual analysis, it is unfolded that the spiritual disorientation in the Indian community has been overtly embodied in two aspects: native men’s alcoholism and their conceding to white masculinity, and child abuse conducted by women for their suffering from intergenerational trauma, which truly represents the mental or psychological crisis of indigenous peoples triggered by and attendant to the land loss. In conclusion, the decolonizing process in Hogan’s fiction necessitates reviewing the horrible outcome of the native people’s land loss history so as to enhance their recognition of the communal place, stimulate their sense of community and develop new sites and strategies of resistance.

A least-cost network neutral landscape model of human sites and routes

ContextNeutral landscape models generate virtual landscapes that enable computer-based exploration of the effects of spatial patterns on ecological processes free from the restrictions of real-world experimentation. For some questions in landscape ecology it is critical to incorporate human landscape features, such as networks, that are an integral part of human-influenced landscapes.ObjectivesThis paper outlines an approach to produce a neutral landscape model that uses the human geography principle of least-cost movement to create a network of human sites (buildings, camps, mines, settlements, farms, factories, etc.) and routes (trails, roads, railways, canals, powerlines, etc.).MethodsWe used a least-cost modelling framework to create sites prioritised on least-cost catchment areas and routes based on least-cost paths. The location of sites and routes is determined by an underlying cost-surface that defines how movement costs vary across the landscape. The range of possible network patterns was quantified via raster network metrics and was compared to real-world network data.ResultsThe proposed neutral landscape model produces networks with a wide range of possible patterns, and using real-world data can guide the selection of parameters that mimic human activity in a variety of land cover classes in real-world landscapes.ConclusionsThis network neutral landscape model extends the potential of neutral landscape models for research into human-influenced landscapes. We provide the code used to generate our examples under a permissive open-source licence.

Assessing the influence of traditional in-seat, online, and emergency remote teaching (ERT) modalities on sustainability learning in human geography

ABSTRACT Globally, the disruptions to higher education caused by COVID-19 required most campuses to make impromptu shifts to emergency remote teaching (ERT). When compared to traditional online education, ERT generally falls short in terms of pedagogies, pacing, and/or successful modality implementation. Elsewhere, it is established that the sudden shift towards online and asynchronous ERT delivery creates student challenges, especially in terms of internet unavailability and social disconnectedness. What remains understudied is the impact of COVID-19 on actual student learning. We address this knowledge gap using a natural research design where we (i) evaluated sustainability learning for traditional in-seat and online human geography students in Fall 2018 and (ii) obtained federal funding to evaluate sustainability learning for ERT and online students in Spring 2020. Results from the analysis indicate that in-seat students outperformed online students prior to COVID-19 on a standardized sustainability knowledge assessment by 13%. Results also indicate that in-seat students prior to COVID-19 (Fall 2018) outperformed ERT students (Spring 2020) by 28%. Discussion and limitations are provided.

Navigating Spaces of Everyday Peace and Violence: Societal Protest, Care, and Solidarity in Post-18O Chile

ABSTRACT Social justice protests that began on 18 October 2019 in Chile were greeted enthusiastically around the globe. The mobilisation ‘woke up’ society and contributed to the collective drafting of a new constitution for the country. Building on ethnographic insights gathered in January–February 2020, this paper analyses forms of violence together with relations of care and solidarity that emerged within the mobilisation. It walks the reader through central Santiago de Chile and discusses the praxis of conducting research in a non-war conflict site, embedded in relations of claiming space (both figuratively and concretely) and creating practices that contribute to greater social justice. Simultaneously, they are enmeshed with manifold forms of violence that need to be addressed for peace to become possible. This paper seeks to contribute to debates on the entangled forms of everyday peace and violence, drawing on feminist research and connecting these with critical geographies of peace.

Home in cybersymbiosis: making home with digital oddkin

ABSTRACT Acknowledging the history of more-than-human approaches in human geography, and the entrenchment of computational devices in the home, this paper advances the concept of cybersymbiosis as framework to think about the way we make home with computational devices. Doing so provides a speculative tool for thinking through our relationships with devices and the way we make home with them in critical ways. Three insights are identified: first, that these relationships are made and change over time; second, that our relationships with technology are often characterised by ambivalence, meaning it is not just about control and exploitation but extends to the mutually defining nature of those relationships; and third, that our relationships with home technologies can be conceptualised as a speculative ecology. Understanding our co-habitation with such devices can bring more sustainable and ethical approaches to our increasingly digitised homelives.

Psychoanalysis, Harm and Risk Reduction in Vulnerable Populations

Since 2013, Corra pro Abraço has offered harm-and-risk reduction programs to substance users and other vulnerable populations in the communities of Salvador, Brazil. When translated into English, the agency’s name “Run for a Hug” epitomizes a profoundly empathic approach derived from both classical psychoanalysis and contemporary theory and practice in mental health. Informed by the concept of “analytical device” to examine the interplay between human, political and physical geography, Corra pro Abraço emphasizes the ethical-political dimension of psychoanalysis. This mission is promoted on multiple levels, from the psychologist who works with individuals on the street, to the planners of a new extension for individual counseling, to the advocates who saw psychoanalysis successfully inserted into aspects of Brazil social policy.

Towards new knowledge complexes for critical geographies of alcohol, drinking, drunkenness

This response engages with the commentaries of Gordon Waitt, Anna De Jong, Samantha Wilkinson, Elen-Maarja Trell, Bettina van Hoven, and Harng Luh Sin on our challenge for geographers to work ‘beyond moralizing, disciplining, and normalizing discourses’. We show how, when read together, these authors articulate progressive geographic imaginations and repeat orthodoxies and impasses that constitute problematic academic, political, policy, and popular thinking. In riposte, we sketch opportunities for pluralist, relational, congenic ontologies, and comparative ‘epissedemologies’, as new indicative examples to elaborate, and further advance, our original provocation towards re-thinking geographies of alcohol, drinking, drunkenness.

The past, present, and future of underwater spaces: From tourist experiences to the possibility of habitation

AbstractThis paper reviews contemporary geography literature pertaining to the development and experience of underwater spaces. Examining the underwater world as a space of practices, experiences, and visions that are both phenomenologically and geopolitically rich, the review covers research studies from human geography and cognate fields concentrating on the tourism and travel literature. After a brief overview of the many activities taking place underwater worldwide—from the evolution of the mythical Atlantis to the development of modern‐day Atlantis such as underwater hotels—the paper focuses studies in three areas: the consumption of cultural and natural heritage, Self‐contained underwater breathing apparatus diving and divers' experiences, and the possibility of human inhabitation of underwater realms in habitats such as underwater hotels and submarine research sites. It is argued that by becoming more familiar with underwater spaces, geographers who concentrate on tourism and marine environments can gain new perspectives that are likely to challenge the terrestrial imagination.

Impact of urban dynamics and climate change on forest areas the Maamora forest in the city of Kenitra, Morocco

Studies have focused on the issue of drought on one hand, and urban dynamics on the other, as prominent topics in physical geography for the former, which specializes in climate change, and human geography for the latter, which concerns field sciences. This research is part of a series of studies and specifically relates to a wetland area in the western plain, specifically Maamora Forest in the city of Kenitra. This research addresses three main axes: the first axis relates to human factors contributing to the reduction and deterioration of Maamora Forest over the past three decades and analyzes their impact on the forest. This is done by determining the development and dynamics of cork oak through remote sensing data, manifested in the analysis of aerial images from three different periods (1975, 1995, and 2022), complemented by field research throughout the period between 2022 and 2023. The second axis focuses on studying climatic data for the studied area, extending from 1987 to 2019. It highlights the manifestations of climate change, such as a decrease in annual precipitation and an increase in temperatures, and their impacts on the overall forest and specifically on cork oak trees. This is done using the LANG equation. The results indicate that the region has experienced four dry periods, accounting for 87.5% of the total 28 years, which range from 1987/1988 to 1995/1994, 1997/1998 to 2010/2011, 2012/2013 to 2014/2015, and 2016/2017 to 2018/2019. In contrast, the percentage of semi-humid and extremely dry years only accounted for 6.25% each, with an average duration of two years. The third axis relates to monitoring the effects of climate change on the forestry sector, specifically the Maamora Forest, through the use of modern techniques such as remote sensing and spectral plant and water indicators. It aims to understand the role of these technologies in spatial monitoring of factors and phenomena that negatively impact forest areas in general, and the Maamora Forest in particular.

The micropolitics of coal in India: understanding resource politics from the ground up through a materiality lens

ABSTRACT Coal in India carries different values and meanings for different actors. Consequently, the politics of this resource is manifested in multiple forms at multiple levels. Whereas the extraction of coal is accomplished by a larger resource politics involving an energy crisis narrative and a need to ensure national resource security, people at the grassroots level – workers, security forces, the displaced, administrators, mine planners, and a wide range of other actors – engage primarily with the micropolitics of coal. In this paper, we draw on new materialities literature in human geography to demonstrate that the everyday micropolitics of coal in the eastern Indian state Jharkhand is more than a subset of national or regional resource politics. In doing so, we analyse four vignettes through a materiality lens based on the land use, weight, pollution, and heat of coal. We use ethnographic methods to untangle everyday and long-term micropolitical trajectories related to coal extraction. We show the fluid and often interchangeable and overlapping roles of actors at the coal face: revolutionary groups striving to become mining contractors, contractors working as politicians to mediate claims, and politicians assuming the role of revolutionaries. Meanwhile coalfield residents make moral claims of indigeneity to gain a share of the resource, or eke out informal, coal-based livelihoods. In this fluid setting, the actors in the micropolitics of coal are influenced by outside forces to varying degrees, and are yet able to reimagine resource politics to their own advantage.